Thai Women, Part VI

Part six in a series of eight posts written back in April of 2012 during and after a trip to Thailand to teach advanced first aid. Parts one, two, three, four, and five are here.

There is insight to be had even in the abuse of a good thing. Those with most experience with that abuse should have the most insight, but it never works that way. You have to stand outside the abuse in order to understand it, which is precisely the opposite of virtue. You only really understand virtue from the inside.

But let’s think about that fantasy the “irresistible male” for a bit. What is really at the heart of it? Why is it so specifically a male fantasy? Well, it really is about projection. The man projects his own attitudes towards sex into the woman he is looking at, and then interprets her actions based on his attitude (women do the same thing). I mentioned in an earlier post the amount of work a high school jock has to do to overcome a girl’s natural resistance and get her to sleep with him. The only reason why this is surprising or frustrating to him is because he is assuming his own sexual instincts in a female body. (I am not, of course, trying to perpetuate the myth that women do not have sexual urges, or that they are not as strong as male sexual urges. In fact, the only reason this myth has come about is because we have interpreted “sexual urge” in overwhelmingly male terms.) If she really were a male mind in a female body there would be no problem. They would look at each other across the gym, nervously smile a few times, someone would break the ice, and then they would have sex.

The reality is that this does not happen. This should be all the evidence we need that women are wired differently than men, and yet we go on believing the myth of instant sexual gratification. The teenage jock, whether he is seventeen or seventy makes little difference, simply cannot understand this, because, never having told his genitals to shut up so he could listen, he still believes that women, deep down inside, really do think of sex the way he does. All he has to do is overcome all the guilt and hang-ups society has burdened her with and allow her inner slut to bloom forth and then she will be his for the taking. It may take a bit of effort, but not half as much effort as if he tried things on her terms. No matter how much work you have to put in to overcome a woman’s natural resistance to casual sex, it costs far less than love. Relationship is much more work.